Forgive the dreadful pun, but I'm working on Passover-friendly coffee here, which is enough to mess with anyone's set of brain cells. Anyway, there's a bit of a scandal brewing in New Zealand as Alice Hutchison, art curator at Palmerston North's Te Manawa gallery and niece of National MP Paul Hutchison, is embroiled in a mess involving alleged plagiarism, a German student's thesis, and the underground filmmaker Kenneth Anger.

The Dominion Post reports that lawyers acting for Berlin-based Miriam Dagan are seeking a £1 million ($NZ2.8 million) settlement from Hutchison's Britain-based publisher, Black Dog Publishing, claiming up to 20 passages from the 256-page book Kenneth Anger: A Demonic Visionary -- nominated for the Prime Minister's Award for Literary Achievement in 2005 -- were lifted almost word for word from her thesis on the film-maker, which she submitted to professors at Berlin's Humbolt University in November 2003.

Hutchison has denied the plagiarism claims. "The fact that [Dagan] wants £1 million is laughable. This book was a labour of love and I have not received a penny from any royalties. Only 4000 copies were printed. I find this (accusation of plagiarism) so upsetting and I can't believe it's happening." She also pointed out that Dagan was thanked in the book's acknowledgements section.

UPDATE: Miriam Dagan's father emailed us to correct the record. Rather than the exorbitant sums reported in the Dominion Post, Daniel Dagan says "this case is not about money but about properly acknowledging the academic work of a young student, in accordance with the educational and ethical values which we all share, and with the accepted, internationally applied rules of attribution." He adds that the actual terms of their proposed settlement with Black Dog are (a) putting an erratum slip acknowledging Miriam's work into the remaining copies of the book, (b) reimbursing the Dagan family's legal costs, and (c) "symbolic damages" of £1,000.